Tag Archives: American Civil War

Have you ever heard the name Kate Warne? Most people haven’t. And yet, she did amazing things – every bit as impressive as household names like Amelia Earhart, Sally Ride and Marie Curie. Not only did she convince the founder of the Pinkerton Detective Agency to hire her as a female operative – in 1856! – she rose through the ranks to head up a Bureau of Female Detectives within the agency, saved Abraham Lincoln’s life en route to his inauguration, and went undercover as a spy for the Union during the Civil War. Continue reading Kate Warne: First Female Detective→

Cathay Williams was the first African American woman to serve in the US Army, she did so by pretending to be a man and going under the pseudonym, William Cathay.

Cathay was born in Independence, Missouri in 1844. Her mother was a slave and her father a ‘free man of colour’. She was born into servitude, working in the home of a plantation owner. When the Union Army came to her town in 1861 slaves were considered ‘contraband’ property. It was routine for them to be forced into the army to work for them, and this is what happened to Cathay. She was to serve as a cook and laundress, against her wishes, as she recalled:

Clara Barton is one of those names most of us know, but many of us don’t know much about her. Maybe we know that Barton was a nurse during the American Civil War, or that she went on to found the American Red Cross. But the immensity of her impact and the incredible woman behind it remains mostly a mystery. Continue reading Clara Barton; Mother to Humanity→

It is truly a tragedy that the name Laura Smith Haviland is not as recognizable as the names of some of her contemporaries, such as Harriet Tubman, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Sojourner Truth. Instead of chapters on her achievements, Haviland’s story is relegated to footnotes in history texts, if it is included at all, yet rarely do we see an example of a person who was able to accomplish so much for the betterment of society despite the obstacles placed in her path.

Haviland was born in Canada in 1808 to the Reverend Daniel Smith and Sene Blancher and was raised as a Quaker. At the age of 16, she married fellow Quaker Charles Haviland. It was after her marriage that Haviland joined the Logan Female Anti-Slavery Society and, the more she became involved in the issue of slavery, the more she realized that the issue was causing a division in the Quaker church, and the Havilands ultimately left the church.